Stranger Than Fiction
by PseudonymousEntity
Summary: Little Harry receives a collection of storybooks mysteriously on his 9th birthday, believing it a happy accident that he shares so many similarities -including his name- with the protagonist. Until his cousin Dudley's 11th birthday comes and brings talking snakes with it. Maybe they aren't storybooks at all...maybe they tell the future.
1. Chapter 1

***Stranger Than Fiction***

 **Stranger Than Fiction** by **Pseudonymous Entity**

* * *

 **Summary:** Harry receives the HP Books mysteriously on his 9th birthday, believing it a happy accident that he shares so many similarities w/ the protagonist. Until, his cousin Dudley's 11th birthday comes and brings talking snakes and disappearing glass with it. Maybe they aren't storybooks at all...maybe, they tell the future.

 **Characters:** Harry Potter

 **Warnings:** None

 **AN:** _Write your version of one of those HP characters read the books fic._ CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

 **Ever Yours, Pseu [The clever, magnificent and ridiculously good looking]**

* * *

 _"Take a bite, c'mon be bold_  
 _Change the way the story's told!"_  
 **-Ways to be Wicked**

* * *

On the 31st of July in 1989, a very unusual thing happened.

Many things made it unusual, the first being the home of Vernon and Petunia Dursley was quite happily -and purposely- as un-odd as any home could ever hope to be. Thus something _at all_ out of the ordinary happening was odd simply by its existence, let alone whatever oddity it may have of its own merit.

On this particular day the one imperfection of number 4 drive, the address belonging to the home of the aforementioned Mr and Mrs Dursley, would _himself_ be the sole discoverer of this particular very unusual thing.

Just after dinner on this perfectly ordinary day a tired and somewhat hungry nine-year-old in desperate need of love and affection, entered his cupboard under the stairs because that was where he lived. One simply couldn't allow flaws to run about in the open, could they? He stood in the semi-darkness and listened as his Aunt Petunia -for despite their familial connection or perhaps entirely because of it, he still lived in such an un-ordinary location- locked the door of the cupboard behind him. With the softest and most weary of sighs he sat on the cot on the floor. His bed.

Only to rise up very quickly.

For there on his bed was a parcel. A parcel address to him, Harry Potter. That alone was monstrously odd to the boy, now known as Harry. He had never received anything before as far as he knew. His heart beat just a bit quicker. Perhaps he'd gotten something for his birthday. A real present. Just this once. Licking his lips, Harry moved toward the mysterious package, untied the string and pulled apart the unadorned brown paper to reveal..books.

Harry blinked once. Blinked twice. No, they were still there. His very own storybooks. With glee he'd never before experienced in his young life Harry climbed onto his cot and inspected his new books. How strange, he then thought to himself. he books were about a wizard named Harry Potter. How odd was that? That they should share the same name?

Harry shrugged, placed the rest of the set to the side and opened the very first book. Young Harry lay awake far into the night rereading that night and every night following. The books his dearest friend, his greatest treasure, his only escape from his horrible ordinary family and his horrible ordinary life. Books about invisibility cloaks, Dark Lords, magical tournaments, and dragons.

It was in the following months and years that little Harry noticed the _strangest_ things happening. The ugly jumper his aunt tried to force upon shrunk until it wouldn't fit anything but a doll. That was certainly strange. And there was the other day in class just before summer vacation. He'd been drawing one of his favourite characters from the books, though he'd given her blue hair rather than bubblegum pink, and his teacher who wasn't at all fond of him said rather nastily that he'd be better of drawing more realist things, and that she didn't care for blue whether or not it was someone's hair.

And if _her_ hair after a bit of glaring from Harry turned blue right there in the middle of class, why, it was a coincidence.

Wasn't it?

And only coincidence that he'd found himself on the roof when Dudley, his cousin, and his gang had been chasing him through the playground. And then there was the time his aunt had cut off all his hair and every bit of grew back overnight just as curly and wild as it ever was. That was Harry's fault, he didn't know why it grew back. Yet...strange things, odd things were happening.

If perhaps, the next time little Harry was sent out to tend to the garden he should have, maybe, carefully named the plants and flowers and their magical properties...if he should be heard whispering charms and spells, he was simply indulging in childish fantasy. Nothing more. And if -sometimes- they should work, it was only his imagination. Surely.

One day he woke up and it was Dudley's eleventh birthday. It came, just as it happened in the book. The presents, the number, the tantrum. Just as it happened in the book.

Harry watched, transfixed, as his aunt and his uncle argued over whether to leave him home alone or to send him to a family friend, his usual babysitter having hurt herself and unable to tend to him. He watched, in the backseat with his cousin Dudley and his friend, as they drove into the zoo parking lot. As the nice cashier at the frozen sweets cart got his uncle to feel obligated to buy his a popsicle. And he stopped dead in his tracks when his cousin entered the retile centre.

There, just as his books said it would be, was a glass enclosure for a very large, very talkative snake.

Harry went home that night, conversations with the serpent fresh in his mind, and he attacked his storybooks with a passionate fervour missing from his previous readings. Every character, every villain, every mistake and every adventure. He read them, he reread them. For he knew, Harry just knew, if he received his letter - _The Letter_ \- that sent the fictional Harry to magic school, then he would know for certain. Was it all in his mind? Was it all his imaginings?

So he waited.

He did his chores and ducked soapy frying pans. He tended the garden and painted the fence, he washed his uncle Vernon's car and he mowed the lawn. Harry Potter waited, and soon the day came. The 24th of Jully 1991, according to the books. The day it would come. Harry sat down to breakfast after servings his uncle and his cousin. Dudley kicked him in the shins under the table, today, though, today he could hardly feel it. He could hardly concentrate on anything at all. Soon he was sent to fetch the post.

Harry padded down the hallway in his dirty socks, reached out a hand and picked up the post.

There it was. A letter addressed to Harry Potter, the cupboard under the stairs. Harry swallowed and shoved it under his shirt. He went about the rest of the day in a sort of trance, only managing to get through it without catching a swat to the side of his head out of muscle memory or something similar, or so he reckoned. The very minute he finished his chores, the minute the last of the dished were scrubbed clean and put away, he walked, as quickly as he dared, to his cupboard. I wouldn't do to be caught now of all times.

Harry entered and listened as his aunt slammed the door shut behind him. He listened as she locked him in and the slats were shut. For a moment, frozen, he stood there still ad silent in the semi-darkness, bracing himself. When one lived a life such as Harry Potter, the flaw of number 4 privet drive, had lived, you learned to always be prepared to be let down. Then, taking in a deep, slow breath, he sat on his cot. He gathered his courage, he pulled out the letter and he broke the seal _The Hogwarts Seal!_ flipped open the flap and pulled out the parchment within.

Bright eyes roamed over the letter, reading, soaking it in. A wide smile sprawling across his face, large green eyes narrowed, glinting in the muted light creeping underneath his cupboard door.

For he knew it now. There was no more pretending and assuming he was pretending. He, Harry Potter, was a wizard first and foremost. Secondly? Glittering eyes swung down to the books piled beside his cot, he knew the future. He knew the villains and their plots, he knew the about the gold waiting for him at the goblin bank, he knew about the Sorcerer's Stone and the questions he'd be asked on his first day of potions. He knew _everything_ and nobody knew that he did.

One small hand reached down drew out the last book. If this was true, if it was really real. He held in his hands the power to change the future.

The power to change the way the story was told.

* * *

 **PseudonymousEntity**  
 **2017**

* * *

 **Notes** : Thoughts, Theories, Questions, Comments and Limericks always welcomed

 **An:** What would _you_ do if you knew the future?

 **Ever Yours, Pseu**


	2. Chapter 2

**Stranger Than Fiction** By **PseudonymousEntity**

* * *

 **Summary:** Harry discovers his favourite set of storybooks actually tell the future. His future.

 **Warnings: None**

 **ANx1:** My take on the **'Characters Read The Books Trope'**

 **Ever Yours, Pseu**

* * *

 _"But they say who do you think you are? What do you think you'll be?_

 _Why do you run around town thinking all these crazy things..._

 _Just know your place just wasn't meant to be -_ _Try and you'll get a good dose of reality..."_

 **-Todrick Hall**

* * *

There are a lot of things to consider when you find out your entire life has been written out in a series of books.

Such as _How incredibly odd I'm the main character of my own story in any sense other than annoying faux-inspirational poster figurative_. Or the brief terror when you try to figure out if that makes you a fictional character and you have your very first existential crises. The books didn't say anything about Harry getting a letter and reading it in his cupboard. It said Harry got caught, which didn't happen.

So _not_ a fictional character.

When the narrative of your future apparently includes goblins, giant snakes, aerial sports and the ability to transform into a specific animal shape at will…it becomes odder still. There is something to be said in favour of a perfectly ordinary life. You have ordinary expectations, ordinary problems, and ordinary choices. Such a life comes with the ability to reasonably guess the sort of obstacles life is likely to throw your way.

Not that Harry Potter _the real one_ had ever experienced a perfectly ordinary life.

Harry glanced up from the pile of books he was studying to scan the still empty cupboard in which he sat. His Aunt Petunia and her family pretended to be ordinary people living ordinary lives. If books had taught him anything other than the revelation of his fictional character status, it was that anyone who needed to pretend to be ordinary, safe, or trustworthy was anything but.

Here, however, is where Real Harry faced a bit of a conundrum.

He didn't exactly _like_ Fictional Harry. His real shoulders winced guiltily. It was just…Fictional Harry…some of his choices and actions genuinely upset Real Harry. There were moments where Fictional Harry was nothing like Real Harry at all. As if the moment he entered the magical world Fictional Harry was trying to be someone else. He certainly didn't seem anything like the sort of person Real Harry imagined himself to be in the future. Fictional Harry did a lot of foolish things.

Of course, he didn't have the luxury of a set of books detailing his possible life.

Still.

Even without them, Harry couldn't see himself doing the things Fictional Harry did. At least, not all of them. Real Harry thought the Harry of the books tended to do things the hard way, and often missed opportunities to make things easier. Or he ignored those opportunities because he didn't _like_ them. Real Harry scrunched his nose in the semi-darkness. He had to have been given these books for a reason.

Perhaps his fictional future-self didn't like the way things turned out and had sent them to him in the hopes he'd make better choices? Harry leaned back against the wall of his cramped cupboard. Thinking hard. He needed to know for certain if he was stuck with the choices written in ink or if he could genuinely dramatically even do things differently. His own way. The Real Harry way.

Would Fate conspire to configure events around him to produce similar outcomes to those in the book, making Real Harry a slave to a non-existent version of himself? Could he make any changes at all or was he fated to walk through the _rest of his life_ knowing everything that would happen, every death, every mistake, and be unable to do _anything_ about it? Deep thoughts for a nearly 11-year-old. But then, you have a lot of time to mature when you're scrubbing floors and laying in the dark instead of playing make-believe.

And it wasn't every day an attention-starved unwanted orphan discovered he knew the future, and might even have _power_ over it.

There was nothing for it. Real Harry would have to be very unordinary and test the constraints, if any, of his new reality. He sat up, eyes narrowed. And he might know just how to do it. Later Harry sneaked from his seemingly ordinary house on its overwhelmingly ordinary street in which it was built and set out on a very unordinary mission.

Locate Diagon Alley.

* * *

 **PseudonymousEntity**

 **2018**

* * *

 **AN:** I wonder if Harry will be able to have any effect on the story. What do you think?

 **ANx2: [2019]** I have no idea why younger me made this chapter so short. My bad.

 **Ever Yours, Pseu**


	3. Chapter 3

**Stranger Than Fiction**

* * *

 **Stranger Than Fiction** by **Pseudonymous Entity**

* * *

 **Summary:** Harry receives the HP books mysteriously on his 9th birthday, believing it a happy accident that he shares so many similarities with the protagonist. Until one day his cousin Dudley's birthday comes and brings talking snakes and disappearing glass along with it. Maybe they aren't storybooks at all. Maye the tell the future.

 **Warning: I don't think we need any at the moment.**

 **Characters:** Harry Potter...also Fictional Harry Potter.

 **AN:** Trying to make my rounds on all the stories and this was next on the list to update. So here you guys go, hope you're still interested. On a side note, I definitely need to edit the first two chapters. I don't think they were edited AT ALL when I first posted them.

 **-Pseu**

* * *

 _Shut up and put your money where you mouth is_

 _That's what you get for waking up in Vegas_

 _Get up and shake the glitter off your clothes now, that's what you get for waking up in Vegas_

 _Now we're partners in crime, don't be a baby - remember what you told me..."_

 **-Waking up in Vegas**

* * *

It really shouldn't be so easy, Harry decided.

It was almost disappointing. Not that he was ready for any sort of trouble but he had _expected_ to have a bit more difficulty completing his mission. Then, the Harry in the books did seem to have an abnormal amount of luck throughout the story. Perhaps it was a side effect of being the main character? Most main characters in books did tend to make it through the various storylines relatively unscathed.

Of course, Fictional Harry was tortured, hunted, emotionally manipulated, suffered from what could only be described by Real Harry as some form of PTSD, and had to _commit suicide_ in order to save the world. Real Harry wasn't certain if that counted as getting through it unscathed. But the thought still stood. Fictional Harry did manage to get along much better than he should have been able to considering Real Harry knew much more than Fictional Harry at this same age. Fictional Harry didn't even know he was a wizard yet.

Feeling a mixture of unreasonably smug and lightly disappointed, Harry faced the fireplace. "The Leaky Cauldron."

 **TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER**

Harry walked down the street with his hands in his pockets. It was summer so it wasn't cold at night or least not cold enough for him to require a jumper. Which was good as he didn't really have any. Not since the shrinking jumper incident. The silver lining there, of course, was that Dudley's hand-me-downs were always a good two sizes or more too big for Harry and there was more than enough extra fabric for him to curl up in it if he needed to do.

He stopped halfway down the street before continuing to walk at a slower pace. It would be odd for someone to stand in the middle of the street in the middle of the night, after all. Anyone out at this time of night was going somewhere, not loitering aimlessly. It had to be at least half-past nine. Any other kids his age were out past curfew. Best not to bring attention to himself.

How would he get to Diagon Alley, Harry wondered to himself. Because there was no one else there for him to wonder to and even if there were they wouldn't have the slightest idea what on earth he was wondering about. That was sort of sad really.

He knew how Fictional Harry got there the first time. With a half-giant named Hagrid. Real Harry didn't have a magical umbrella, however, and he didn't have a wand to use to summon the Knight Bus. And that really _was_ a pity for Real Harry thought that that was one of the most interesting forms of magical transportation he had read about. Magic carpets too though they appeared to be outlawed in wizarding Britain.

Harry then realized that his perfectly ordinary cat lady who often babysat him was, in fact, something called a squib. Which mean she couldn't cast spells herself or see things like dementors but did, in fact, have access to and contact with the wizarding world if she so chose. She was in contact with the headmaster at Hogwarts throughout fictional Harry's childhood. Harry turned on his feet, shoes sliding in the bit of dirt kicked up on the pavement, and made for her house. It was a faded blue colour and looked much like every other perfectly ordinary house on a perfectly ordinary street.

Harry took the key out from under the welcome mat and let himself in. He was used to doing so as he was sent to her when his relatives didn't feel like bringing him along wherever they were going. She was okay, Harry supposed. Nice enough. But her house was forever dusty and had odd smells.

Those might be potions now that Harry thought about it.

An orange cat rubbed against Harry's legs as he made his way through a living room stuffed with felines, cushions, stools, and kitty toys. Most of the cats didn't pay him any mind. Harry reached the carpet that lay in front of the fireplace. Upon the mantel was a small jar. Harry edged around some snoozing felines and stacked a few pet magazines on top of one another and scrambled up on them. Balancing precariously, Harry lifted up on his top toes and grasped the jar. Harry jumped from the magazine stack and examined the jar in his hands. Glittery dust lay within. Harry turned to the fireplace.

Shrugging, because it either was floor powder or it wasn't, Harry took a pinch tossed it into the fire. The flames flickered green immediately, casting an eerie glow over the living room. He was right, she was connected to the floor.

Feeling like he was getting away with this far too easily Harry faced the fire once more. He waited for one beat, two beats. Giving the Gods of the books a chance to intervene.

"The Leaky Cauldron." Harry stepped into the flames.

The world spun around him, making his stomach twist horribly. Harry shut his eyes until he was unceremoniously spat out of the fireplace again. Harry stumbled forward and was caught -with a startled exclamation- by some soul unfortunate it enough to have been standing in front of the fireplace when Harry came out. The unknown person helped steady Harry on his feet which he was eternally grateful for. What a terrible way to travel!

"I say, are you quite alright?"

Harry nodded, patting soot off himself. Not that it made much of difference, he knew he probably looked like a street urchin.

"Are you certain? That was a big tumble. Do you think you may have accidentally come out the wrong floo? No one else has spat themselves out behind you, not that I make the assumption such unfortunate exits are hereditary, and for someone as young as you, I _do_ assume you were out with a chaperon? I don't suppose you're lost?"

Harry paused and looked around. One large table down the centre of the room and several smaller ones scattered about the edge, a bar at one end and some stairs he knew would lead to rooms to rent. He looked up to firmly reassure his saviour that he was in fact exactly where he meant to be, Harry looked directly into a pair of bright blue eyes behind square glasses, framed with red hair.

Harry stared. "I...you're the one with an evil rat!" Harry's mouth exclaimed before he could stop it. To be fair that was what he had been thinking but he certainly hadn't meant to say it aloud.

The red-headed boy blinked. "What an odd thing to say."

* * *

 **Pseudonymous Entity**

2019

* * *

 **Thoughts, Theories, Questions and Limmericks always welcomed**

 **NOTES:** Odd indeed. Now what?

 **-Pseu**


End file.
